CVER News 2016 – 2017

December 2017

Congratulations to Brett MacKinnon who has successfully defended her MSc thesis

supervisor: Sophie St. Hilaire

October 2017

Congratulations to Derek Price who has successfully defended his PhD thesis

supervisor: Sophie St. Hilaire

September 2017

Congratulationsto the following graduate students who have successfully defended their graduate theses:

Babafela Awosile – PhD – supervisors: J McClure, Luke Heider

Shauna Richards – PhD – supervisor: John VanLeeuwen

Niorn Ratanapob – PhD – supervisors: Shawn McKenna, Jeff Wichtelr

Welcome to some new graduate students:

Allie Ralling, special student status working with Dept of Veterans Affairs.

Supervisor is Linda VanTil.

Mohamed Afifi, PhD in Statistics.

Supervisor is Henrik Stryhn

Peter Kimeli, PhD in Epidemiology.

Supervisor is John VanLeeuwen

Benedetto Morandi, Special student.

Supervisor is John VanLeeuwen

Dario Vallejo, Special student.

Supervisors are Julien Reyes and Greg Keefe.

Welcome to Babafela Awosile to a post-doc with the CERC program.

Welcome to Julien Reyes to a post-doc with the MQM program.

March 2017

Congratulations to Dennis Makau and Joan Muraya for successfully passing their comprehensive exams for their PhD programs at UPEI.

Welcome (back) to Omid Nekouei to UPEI. He has joined the CERC group as a post-doc in aquatic epidemiology. He is the most recent addition, bringing our post-doc total to 11 now. We welcome all, both those who have stayed on after their PhD, and those other new arrivals in the last while. The post-doc group includes: Adel Elghafghuf, Ibrahim El-Sohaby, Beibei Jia, Emilie Laurin, Ana Marques, Marcelo Martinez, Gregor McEwan, Thitiwan Patanasatienkul, Julian Reyes, and Krishna Thakur.

Welcome back to Javier Sanchez who is back from his sabbatical from July to December 2016.

Happy sabbatical to Henrik Stryhn who will be on sabbatical from January 2017 to December 2017. Enjoy.

November 2016

We welcome Marina Delphino visiting with us from November 17th to December 1st. During her stay, she is working on data analysis from her Tilapia research in Brazil.

Marina concludes her DVM (2007) and Master degree in Animal Health (2010) at the University of Brasília, Brazil, working out with risk analysis and biosecurity at the swine industry. She also experienced work with animal welfare; food safety management and epidemiological studies for brucellosis and tuberculosis in Brazil. Between 2010 and 2016, she worked at the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture (2010-2015) and for the Ministry of Agriculture (2016) at the Aquatic Animal Health Coordination, with focus on the development of surveillance for aquatic animal. She is also a PhD student in Animal Health (Epidemiology) by the UnB working on an aquaculture project (Disease risks of fish farming in public reservoirs: a follow-up study conducted in Três Marias, Brazil).

We also welcomed Kiranpreet (Kiran) Kaur visiting with us in October/November. She worked to develop collaborative projects with Crawford and Gregor in areas related to drug resistance in sea lice populations using mathematical modelling approaches.

Dr. Kaur is a molecular biologist. She obtained her PhD in 2009, from Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS), in Pilani, India. Her thesis dealt with molecular genetic analysis of a childhood disease called Primary Congenital Glaucoma (PCG), a highly prevalent eye disease among infants in Southern India. She worked on finding the candidate genes and their association with disease pathogenesis on a cohort of 300 PCG families.After her PhD, Kiran worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois, College of Medicine, Peoria, USA, from 2009-2010. She worked on one of the most prevalent brain cancer called *Glioblastoma* and use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) as a therapeutic agent against glioblastoma, at both in vitro and in vivo level.

Kiran migrated to Norway in 2010, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Oslo University Hospital, Ullevål, from 2010-2012. She worked on the ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) using novel agents, without losing their stem cell properties.

Since 2012, Kiran has been working at the Norwegian University of Life sciences, as a postdoctoral researcher. She works on unraveling the resistance mechanisms in salmon louse towards different parasiticides. The project is mainly aimed to find molecular markers associated with resistance in salmon louse, and develop rapid molecular diagnostic assays for screening.

September 2016

Congratulations to following students who successfully defended their graduate degree theses (available in Island Scholar) in the last while:

Rayappan Cyril RoyMatt SaabJulian Reyes-VelezBeibei JiaNiamh Caffrey

Congratulations and welcome to Dr. Raph Vanderstichel for his new position as an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the Dept of Health Management at UPEI

Congratulations and welcome to Dr. Colleen Walton for her new position as assistant Professor of Nutrition in the Dept of Applied Human Sciences at UPEI

Congratulations and farewell to Dr. Maggie Cameron for her new position as an epidemiologist at the PEI Dept of Health and Wellness